11 eerie photos of abandoned places around the world

Giersdorf Church, located in the small Polish village of Żeliszów, was abandoned in 1945.
"Abandoned Places"

What author Richard Happer loves most about abandoned places is that they're everywhere you look — if you look hard enough.

"There are so many of them, right on the doorstep of our everyday worlds," Happer told Tech Insider in 2016. "Hidden beneath our cities, unnoticed on high mountainsides. The more exploring you do, the more abandoned places that you find."

Pennsylvania's Eastern State Penitentiary, opened in 1829, introduced a new prison model by isolating inmates and subjecting them to labor. It closed 142 years later.

The Beelitz Sanatorium outside Berlin, Germany, once housed patients being treated for tuberculosis. The building also treated a young Adolf Hitler when it was converted into a military hospital. Soviet forces later occupied it.